As the WLAN represented by the IEEE 802.11 protocol provides a good solution for access to the Internet and Intranet, the WLAN has rapidly developed at present. As wireless terminals such as a notebook computer, a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) and an intelligent mobile phone become popular, APs of the WLAN are dramatically increased. Due to the continuous increase of the APs, a planning mechanism needs to be properly deployed, so as to avoid the disadvantages such as decrease of the overall network performance and poor manageability caused by random deployment.
In the prior art, the characteristics of the WLAN APs, for example, the number of the APs, deployment positions, and configuration of the APs, may be determined according to the input floor planning data, coverage data, and capacity data. The floor planning data is some construction factors such as a size and a topology, AP configuration such as positions and AP attributes such as power and channels. The coverage data is the characteristics of the WLAN APs at all floor positions, including a connection rate, a coverage area, and a transmission rate. The capacity data corresponds to a throughput of the APs, which may be determined according to the number of corresponding active terminals. Finally, the corresponding AP configuration (for example, positions, and AP attributes such as power and channels) are determined and emulated in a computer based on the three types of data.
In the prior art, the AP configuration is determined through manual adjustment, including deployment positions of the APs, and power and channels used by the APs, and therefore the cost becomes limitless.